Welcome to the Animal Societies Lab, the Research group of Dr Darren Croft, University of Exeter.

Our research is focused on addressing two main questions (i) What are the mechanisms and functions that underpin the structure of animal societies? (ii) What are the evolutionary implications of this structure? To address these questions we combine experimental and observational work on wild and captive animal populations with controlled laboratory experiments. The research topics covered are broad and include; the evolution of cooperation, life history evolution, social recognition and sexual conflict. As such we work on a wide range of study systems ranging from small fresh water fish to resident killer whales.